Robert and Margaret Fulton Spencer with Ann Spencer and friends en route to Europe, 1929, photo courtesy of Ann Spencer Simon

The niece of painters Thomas Alexander Harrison and Birge Harrison, Margaret Fulton Spencer was one of the first female practicing architects in the United States. She married painter Robert Spencer in 1914, and they settled in New Hope. A specialist in restoring early fieldstone farmhouses, she also designed interiors for clients. Robert Spencer's unsupportive attitude towards her architectural career led her to painting. Her paintings were primarily impressionistic still-life or of landscape subjects. After Robert Spencer's death in 1931, Margaret traveled to Africa and lived in Paris, where she worked for American architectural firm, and exhibited at the Paris Salon. In the late 1930s she purchased a 200-acre ranch in the desert of Arizona where she designed 16 cottages, using the area's multi-colored stones for floors and walls. Known as Las Lomas Estates, these cottages were vacation homes to the rich and famous during the 1940s and 50s. After her death in 1966, a fire left Las Lomas a less glamorous retreat. Under consideration as a National Historic Site, it may be refurbished to its original state as a lasting tribute to Margaret Fulton Spencer, a woman who had the courage to pursue a dream.- Robert and Margaret Fulton Spencer with Ann Spencer and friends en route to Europe, 1929, photo courtesy of Ann Spencer Simon